Tag Archives: Life

I’ve been thinking. Maybe a little too much thinking, but I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking about pasts and futures and changes too. It is such a crazy thing to look at someone and only know them for your current associations that it’s easy to forget that, like you, they have a history. A person they used to be and a person they are now based on the past. The people they knew, the places the soles of their feet have touched and made marks on. It’s crazy too to think about a future. A future that is largely unknown and yet we get up every day step forward into it. My sister and I were out exploring nature and she took a picture of me walking along a path that’s made of wooden boards that goes for a while and then just ends. I looked at that picture again today and realized how symbolic it is of life. We live in the now with what we know and we wake up every day a little further along in yesterday’s future. We plan and dream and struggle and survive as best we can for a future that we hope we know. At the end of the day, we don’t really know what will be next. An entire life, reality, dream, hope, plan can change in a matter of seconds. Even the things we were certain would never change, can change too. Relationships change gradually, goals shift sometimes… You can stand there and look back at the boardwalk behind you, at the past, and see how it lead you to where you are, but we won’t ever fully be able to look ahead and see everything; see exactly how exactly the path will continue.

I’m really bad at writing my posts and publishing them. I’m trying to write a new one right now and I sometimes feel like I can’t say exactly what I want to say. Other times, as I write and I’m overwhelmed, unfinished or not, as soon as the words start coming out -even if no one ever hears or reads them- I feel calmer and end up never finishing or posting the drafts. So, more often than not, the things I write end up being forgotten drafts. I stumbled on this one tonight and thought back to when it was originally written and what was going on in my life at that time. I was working at my old job that was not giving me as much as it was taking from me. I was desperate and tired and worried about my future. Although this point in my life has passed, I think it’s important to remember because you forget how bad (or how good, but in this case bad) things had gotten. So bad that you are surprised when something good happens. So from now on, as I go back through old drafts, I will periodically publish them, finished or not, to leave a record of how I existed at one point in time. Published 07/08/2016 – Drafted 04/21/2015 West Valley City, Utah

When I started this blog, I was so enthralled by the idea that my life wasn’t a single dot in an expanse of humanity. My life is, in fact, tethered to other people’s lives for reasons that will sometimes be apparent, and at other times not quite as clear. It was this single obsessive thought that hounded me. So much so that I’ve created a blog centered around that one amazing idea that at any given moment in your life you are never alone.

This morning I was reminded of that.

I woke up feeling a little despondent and a little bit like life had taken me to the top of a tower with a beautiful sunset overlook and as the sun retracted its light from the earth, pushed me over and smiled smugly as I went careening into all my dark and lonely thoughts.

The feelings of doubt that I somehow keep at bay every day were wanting to come out and play. The thought of facing my stagnant and monotonous life was glaringly painful and I dragged as I struggled to get ready. I tried to play the TV in the background, then I tried music, then I checked my Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook… the whole time subconsciously hoping that I would stumble upon something that helped motivate my day.

It’s nearly 3 AM and the wheels in my mind and the strings in my heart are turning, pulling. Isn’t that always the way it goes: over-active minds going strong at inopportune moments.

I’m having one of the moments when if I don’t acknowledge something, I’ll be kept up for a long time.

Within the past, say, two years I’ve learned to appreciate a lot. But I’ve also noticed that I’m more bitter about certain things and sometimes it just eats away at me. I try not to be bitter because I feel like this huge festering sore. Or an annoying itch that has decided the best place to appear underneath my skin where I can scratch all I want but it’s not going to get much better.

How do I get rid of the itch and cure the sore? I can walk around all day and all night, month after month, year after year acting blasé and nonchalant but what I really want to do is just…get better.

I’ve decided that bitterness doesn’t become me, but I also know it’s also flabbergastingly hard to get rid of.

It tends to happen that in the face of change, many things are revealed. As things shift, new thoughts and new ways come forward and you’re able to look back and see a glimpse of just how things used to be. Things have once again shifted in my life. Not the small, almost undetectable shifts, but one that has been forecasted and has been a source of both anticipation and dread. Life is changing and that’s the simple, yet vague way of saying it. What thing has been revealed in the face of this major shift? What is there now that wasn’t there before? I’ll tell you what, but you’ll have to promise not to laugh, because you see my shoulders have changed. I’m not girl of particularly large stature. In fact, I’m the perfect armrest for many that I know. I’m strong but not too strong and I’ve always been confident but not in everything I do or say. In the past few months, or perhaps the past few years, my shoulders have been growing. They’re stronger somehow. When that happened, I’m not sure. I can only see that they’ve filled out and grown to be sturdier. They feel different too. The only other important detail is that this change is not necessarily physical or tangible. My soul feels like it’s expanded and has filled my shoulders. They’ve grown up and grown out and have grown to be square, to evenly spread all the weight I’ve had to bear. I now know that before, my shoulders were not as purposeful or as beautiful as they are today because of my trials.

I’m finding out that when you have a lot of things to do and you’re feeling overwhelmed, the best way to approach it is to tackle your tasks little by little and get the most important ones out of the way.

Prepare the best you can, and whatever less important thing isn’t done to the degree of perfection you had originally anticipated, let it go.

When it’s all said and done, you may not have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”, but the relief you’ll feel when it’s done is still going to be rewarding.

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I've always had trouble with "About me" sections. What am I supposed to say? I suppose I've never liked the way it felt like a "tell us all your accolades!" type of situation. However, I can say that I am new to life, but it feels as though life and I have known each other for a long time. I love the ocean, the stars, the moon, the sky. I have this wonderfully crippling capacity to love. I love that I have so much love to give, but I have to say that I do have moments when empathy gets really hard, and I wish I was a little more distant. Luckily though, I can naturally gravitate toward loving again!